The Dominance of Nation-States
What would be the legal system applicable on Mars? That is a question that has fascinated countless individuals. We have the redundant Outer Space Treaty (OST) and the Moon Treaty, which hegemonize nations over individuals. The fundamental question I always wanted to ask is why nations should be given primacy over individuals. Of course, we should respect cultures, and we should have some basic rules governing society, but beyond that I do not see any point in giving more power to countries over individuals. Historically, taxation was useful in developing basic infrastructure, and even today it does serve some meaningful purposes.
However, the utility of taxation is fading away. A whole book could be written on why taxation is not useful anymore, but the focus of this essay is on the applicability of a legal system on Mars. Many people contend that it is too early to ask this question. I wholeheartedly disagree. I think this is the only right time when we should be debating the laws on Mars. If we do not debate now and start debating once Mars is in the process of colonization, then opportunists will have a free pass, and most likely the power-brokers along with nation-states will extend “International Law” on Mars as well.
Far too much harm has been done in trying to balance competing interests of “nations,” and far too little has been achieved in the process. Today, the economy is being driven by artificial intelligence (AI), although many still disagree on that. The trends are unmistakable now. AI will drive the growth in the future, and the doomers of AI are going to have a hard time reconciling with the fact that we are building orbital data centres so that we can accelerate our journey to reach Mars.
Consensus of Individuals
The law or the constitution of Mars is a complicated topic and requires consensus of the stakeholders, namely the people. The states must not be allowed to usurp this process. UN bodies such as UNCOPUOS and UNOOSA sound fantastic on paper, but they have not been able to come up with anything progressive. Rather, they have been status quoists who desperately want to prevent “International Law” from being redundant. If anybody discusses other options, those people are termed fringe groups, and not enough weightage is given to the voice of such people on such “international” forums.
It was against this “international” approach and as a rebellion to it that the whole concept of cryptocurrency gathered traction and is still going well. Though some would argue that the price of Bitcoin has gone far below their expectations, those naysayers are also the same people who are the doomers of AI.
AI is going to dominate the future, and with the help of AI, hopefully, we will end up colonizing Mars in the near future. Today, the laws relating to AI are also not clear, so it is a folly to expect that laws relating to Mars would be clear.
Let’s Start Talking
The only thing that I want to propose through this writing is that individuals should start deliberating about the laws of Mars more. X.com is a great forum. It is the only free speech platform left where people can pretty much say anything they want to. Elon Musk has also talked about this issue often, and I am pretty sure that a lot of voices would get involved if such discussions start taking place about Mars on X.
Similar calls were also made in the past by Demis Hassabis with respect to future of AI. You can read about it here.